Volume 6, Number 3, May 2010 - Paper 7 - pp. 269-277

YING WU1, LIYANG XIE2, YUMEI YUE3

Abstract:

Petri Nets can represent static structure and dynamic change in a system, and reflect the state of a system and the development of event. It can express spread relationship of faults and identify the minimal cut sets (MCS) according to the relationship between inputs and outputs implied in the Incidence Matrix of Petri Nets. Petri Nets can also be used for qualitative analysis according to the program of the method and shows its advantage when dealing with models containing repeatable events. The proposed method differs from other cut sets-finding methods in fault tree analysis, and utilizes the property of Petri nets. It is easy for programming. In addition, failure detection using reachability concepts and state equation of Petri nets according to the number of tokens or initial states can predict the next state and final state of a system. A sample system is analyzed to show the process of the proposed method.